RIP, Child of Ezra. This seems to be a case of lips delighting the commentariat a little too much. First rule of verbal warfare: Give the enemy no ammunition that he did not have until you opened your mouth and handed it to him.

good lord you people are angry. if only there were less journalists in the world and more midwestern law prof bloggers! the world has been so blind

Journalists themselves are no problem. It's when journalists collude behind the scenes to coordinate their messaging that people get upset. When you read the stuff about how Weigel tried to make sure everyone was on message when it came to Coakley's defeat, how can you not get peeved?

Personally, I'd like to see a disclosure of every name on that listserv and then a breakdown of everyone who wrote about the Coakley defeat and how they framed it. If it pans out like I think it will, you'd have to conclude that these "journalists" are nothing more than a shadow PR wing of the Democratic Party.

It was ironic, in a way, that it would be the Daily Caller that published e-mails from Journolist. A few weeks ago, its editor, Tucker Carlson, asked if he could join the list. After asking other members, I said no, that the rules had worked so far to protect people, and the members weren't comfortable changing them. He tried to change my mind, and I offered, instead, to partner with Carlson to start a bipartisan list serv. That didn't interest him.

Just read his piece. He is pretty disingenuous. I'll give why I believe that, but first let me address something taking him at face value.

"The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left... I thought it necessary: There would be no free conversation in a forum where people had clear incentives to embarrass each other. A bipartisan list would be a more formal debating society."

If one was to take him at face value, then he is really naive, to think that the center and liberals would not have incentives to embarrass each other. But just the fact that they are not the same implies that they would be in conflict in their overall goals.

Which is why I think he is disingenuous. He did not want centrists. He wanted liberals and liberals who could pass as centrists while still being liberals. And that is what makes him disingenuous.

Which was especially clear when he wrote "I didn't like that rule." Horsepucky. He gives it away here--

"I knew of military list servs, and health-care policy list servs, and feminist list servs. Most of these projects limited membership to facilitate a particular sort of conversation. It didn't strike me as a big deal to follow their example."

Military lists limit membership to foster a military sort of discussion.

Klein limited his list to liberals (and, ahem, 'centrists') to foster a liberal discussion, not to foster a discussion that "would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another".

If he wanted the latter, he would restrict the list to journalists and policy experts, not limited to his side of the aisle, and would have enforced a professional decorum to encourage the sharing of insights with each other.

He didn't do that, because it was not the goal, and he's fooling no one who isn't already a fool in claiming otherwise.

The main criticism of the Journolist listserv is that its secrecy created an incestuous relationship between journalists and their sources who, although they might not be members of government, were engaged in political advocacy -- and that could lead to reporters being co-opted.

But of course, you guys are way too intelligent and ethical to let that happen, aren't you? Either that, or it's an issue that doesn't matter to editors anymore. After all, the WaPo hired Klein. No big deal.

Thankfully, the actually informed populace is rapidly outgrowing the "correctly informed" populace. Wiegel and the rest of them are just the tip of the sword. Let's expose the rest of the frauds and hucksters huddled under the MSM banner. They hide for a reason.

You could always tell which of the Leftist pundits were on the JournoList because they'd all conspicuously write the same thing at the same time. I expect they'll do the same thing with JournoList 2.0, but now we'll get to see who's REALLY on the inside.

"Extremely smart people engaging in policy debates on the stories of the day."

That is rich. Why, if they are so extremely smart, does shit keep exploding in their faces? Why, if they are so extremely smart, do they need a private list-serv to help themselves control the narrative? Why, if they are so extremely smart, can't they actually keep their list-serv private and actually control the narrative?

Finally, Why, if they are so extremely smart, are they living in one-bedroom apartments near DuPont Circle?

Why does it seem like a lot of people that dislike journolist are just mad they didn't get invited to join the list. Tucker Carlson asked to join the list, was denied, then publishes private emails from the list. What a douchebag.

Garage -- Why, if the left is so right and so popular, does it need a private list to keep its story straight?

Why, if the left is so right and so popular, would members of the left commiserate angrily about a guy who simply puts newspaper headlines on a website? Why, if the left is so right and so popular, do people read that guy instead of their stuff?

So, in your mind, you think what Carlson did was "logical"? If you're a 8th grade vindictive little prick who just got turned down by a girl, yea. What about this list that the right just can't take is really weird. And blatantly petty. I could care less how many conservative email lists there are out there.

"The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left... I thought it necessary: There would be no free conversation in a forum where people had clear incentives to embarrass each other. A bipartisan list would be a more formal debating society."

with the statement that he wanted to set up a bipartisan journolist with Tucker Carlson. He is saying here that he does not want a bipartisan list and with Tucker Carlson he does want a bipartisan list. Something does not ring true with this guy at all. Either he is lying about his conversation with Tucker Carlson or he is lying here.

dick, the guy was 23 when he started journolist, and he's 26 now. I wouldn't spend too much time pondering his inconsistencies. I would worry that such a person has the microphone he has, but then, I'd bet that fewer than three in one hundred people have ever heard of him.

Gotta love that "twisted." LOL funny, especially coming from a partisan journalist in DC, where private emails are the proverbial field of dreams for partisan hacks a/k/a/ 'investigative' reporters.

Doesn't he read even the front page of the NYT? Ever heard of, oh, Climate-gate, or does he think the only story there was about hacking/leaking and not what was leaked? Ezra, are you so busy chasing the "expert community" that you don't have time to see what's about to smack you in the face any more?

Taking the conversation out of the public eye made us less defensive, less interested in scoring points. I learned about his position, and why he held it, in ways that I wouldn't have if our argument had remained in front of an audience.

The problem isn't that he and others need an email list. It's that they're making their public discussions more about ego than truth. Focus on scoring points for the truth instead of scoring points for yourself.

And there's this:

By not thinking of the right person to interview, or not asking the right question when I got them on the phone, or not intuiting that an economist would have a terrific take on the election, I was leaving insights on the table.

That was the theory behind Journolist: An insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another.

Coupled with this:

The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left. I didn't like that rule, but I thought it necessary: There would be no free conversation in a forum where people had clear incentives to embarrass each other.

So you didn't want to leave insights on the table unless they were lean right to far right? You wanted to draw out intelligent ideas and then you cut off half of your possible intelligent minds to draw them from? That was stupid. Also, purposely myopic. You're a journalist, and you purposely set out to skew your understanding of any given issue? To throw out half your data points arbitrarily?

A private e-mail list is not public, but it is electronically archived text, and it is protected only by a password field and the good will of the members. It's easy to talk as if it's private without considering the possibility, unlikely as it is, that it will one day become public,

Naive to the point of absurdity. A list with hundreds of journalists on it is unlikely to go public? That possibility didn't seem "fully real" to the participants? Do the participants consist mainly of mental deficients? Sounds like there was an exceptional bit of group think going on if list members had convinced themselves of the list's privacy. It is probably safe to assume, given the limited nature of the list, that that group think spilled over into other issues.

But insofar as the current version of Journolist has seen its archives become a weapon, and insofar as people's careers are now at stake, it has to die.

The time to grow up is now. A large email list will never stay private. Believing that some new list will not succumb to the same issues is childish. You are adults. Your email list is not and never will be your super secret club house, no girls allowed, do you know the secret password hideaway.

Tucker Carlson's behavior seems entirely normal. People wanted to know about this weird, incestuous, liberals-only, journalist club. Tucker tried to get into it to find out. They didn't let him in, so he found out some other way. The progression here seems obvious.

So he did something a journalist would do in a heartbeat. I'm guessing you think all journalists are douchebags?

I bet some journalists asked to be in the group. I also bet some liberal journalists asked to be in a conservative group at one time or another. As far as I know, Carlson is the only douchebag that asked to join a group and was turned down, and then printed those emails from the group he was turned down by on his website. To me, that takes gall that would choke a fucking horse. Does everyone have to copy in Carlson to any email they send? Send an email to Carlson for his approval first? Conservative journalists don't send emails to each other? Seriously, what in the fuck.

(WaPo) National editor Kevin Merida told me for my story on the subject in May that he never asked Weigel about his politics, and (Ezra) Klein said he presented him to the paper simply as the best reporter covering conservatives. (Weigel's blog is subtitled, "Inside the conservative movement.")

“The way I explained Dave is that he’s the best reporter on the conservative movement beat,” Klein said, describing Weigel as “hard to characterize politically.

And according to Klein here:I set two rules for the membership. The first was the easy one: No one who worked for the government in any capacity could join. The second was the hard one: The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left

So he had to know his politics to invite him, right?

And the final kicker for the honorable WaPo:But there's no sign the Post really thought this through. ...One thing nobody argues is that publications should misrepresent and misidentify their own reporters. The Post set Weigel up for a fall, and themselves for embarrassment, and that's what they got today.

The sad truth is that the Washington Post, in its general desperation for page views, now hires people who came up in journalism without much adult supervision, and without the proper amount of toilet-training.

I am thinking that, since Klein did not give him access, Carlson is not the leaker. He is not the one who betrayed a confidence.

That should be pretty obvious.

Which, naturally, explains why it went over your head.

It is obvious to me why Carlson did what he did, he is a sniveling little cunt. But that still doesn't make it "logical". As I said earlier, if Weigel had emailed glowing things about conservatives, conservatives wouldn't be mad, and Carlson wouldn't have printed them. Which makes him a partisan hack that he is, and also ironically what Weigel is getting accused of himself. C'mon man. Schadenfreude I can totally see, defending this totally different. I mean, does Carlson have to reveal and invite what groups he is part of to liberls? Disclose his emails? Pffft.

No, it is that you are being illogical. If Carlson wasn't part of the list, but was able to read and pass on messages from the list, then the list wasn't private. Not that it makes much sense to call an opinion "private" when you share it with 400 strangers anyway...

But even if you want to call Journolist messages "private", Carlson had no obligation whatsoever to respect that privacy. In fact, as a journalist he had a professional obligation not to respect that privacy. Founding a secret club for journalists where members get to pass around secret messages about people outside the club is fine. But whining when journalists outside the club find out about them is childish.

Lefties love it when the NYT and others publish secret government documents and thereby aid America's enemies and the ongoing lawfare campaign against America, but HOW DARE someone publish the emails of these supposed journalists as they coordinate their propaganda efforts on behalf of the chief executive of the United States! I mean seriously, where's the legitimate public interest in that - I mean sure, these "Jourlisters" were only working coordinate their shaping public perception on the vital topics of the day, but still, it was supposed to be PRIVATE. Someone TOLD.

Weigel may not be a "leftist" by your definition, but by his own admission he is a Democrat booster and a conservative basher. Oh, and also a "man" who engages in death and torture fantasy. But not a leftist.

Holdfast -- The best part about all this is that all the coordination amounted to very little. Electing Obama over McCain? Big deal in the overall scheme of things. Both were destined to be one-termers.

I see parallels between all this and the group of young leftists and communists who emigrated to Washington around the Great Depression. Alger Hiss was, of course, the most famous. All that coordination and secret meeting and...for what exactly? Klein's ideas are already marginalized in all but a few pockets of the country.

Ezra Klein's JournoList presented the Washington Post an ethical problem that it failed to address until it was too late.

JournoList was composed both of journalists and of liberal policy wonks whose business was to influence government. Can you see how a secret forum like this coaxed journalists, even the ones who think they are sophisticated, into identifying with the causes of the wonks? This process is call "co-opting." It is a highly corrosive influence that leads reporters into having a personal investment in the outcome of public policy issues -- something a professional journalist should not have. It degrades the quality of the reporting into something that is dull and tendentious.

Ezra Klein is the real villain in this debacle. The Washington Post should have recognized the Journolist listserver for the threat to professional journalism that it was. If Klein has any respect for the Post, he should resign too.

"I bet some journalists asked to be in the group. I also bet some liberal journalists asked to be in a conservative group at one time or another. As far as I know, Carlson is the only douchebag that asked to join a group and was turned down, and then printed those emails from the group he was turned down by on his website. To me, that takes gall that would choke a fucking horse. Does everyone have to copy in Carlson to any email they send? Send an email to Carlson for his approval first? Conservative journalists don't send emails to each other? Seriously, what in the fuck."

OK I'll grant you he's not a firedoglake leftist. But clearly he's left of center.

But please, please, please let's not go through another discussion a la Andrew Sullivan of who's a conservative and who claims to be a conservative (not that Wiegel ever claimed he was a conservative). If this whole sordid affair has done anything it has demonstrated how many pundits on the left struggle to understand what a conservative is.

And what makes this worse is that Klein thought Weigel was "the best reporter on the conservative movement beat"

Note what Smith said in his piece "Weigel, whose stuff I enjoy, and whom I link almost daily here, has been the leading chronicler of the right-wing fringe since his time at Reason"

So he's not a conservative but he's the "best reporter" on the conservative movement who's stock in trade was chronicling the "right-wing fringe"

Now if that's not a set up for Schadenfreude times ten, then I don't know what it.

Apparently, you think it is wrong for someone to give an audience to whistle-blowers?

Printing emails that revealed a blogger said some mean things that may have hurt the poor feelings of Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh isn't whistle blowing journalism. It's catty, and he has every right to generate traffic to his site with gossipy bullshit, but that hardly makes him a journalist.

I didn't say it was journalism. I said he did what was good for his own venture.

What is really clear is that the left does not like it being shown that supposed objective journalists are nothing of the sort.

Your anger is at Carlson, because you have no one else to be angry at (unless the whistle-blower's identity is revealed). Why you are angry, though, is apparently because you feel your ideology has suffered a setback.

The (very) odd aspect of this for me is that if you've read Weigel's columns covering the right for the Post, they've been as fair as any reporter I've read covering the movement. Yeah, his piece on the Etheridge matter was eye-opening especially since he clearly was more interested in promoting some sort of conservative conspiracy behind the event.

Politically, I think he's more of an anti-conservative than a liberal or leftist. And hostile, for good or bad, to social conservatives above all else.

But the Post simply can't have a reporter covering people that he's shown to be openly hostile to. This is more than saying "mean things" about Limbaugh or Drudge. This is about slamming the door on sources that you'll need to cover.

Why you are angry, though, is apparently because you feel your ideology has suffered a setback.

Weigel isn't a liberal, and it's just dumb to label him one. Therefore, I can't feel a loss because he wasn't out advocating ideologies that I deem liberal. To be a liberal, you need to be *for* a range of liberal views. Writing something critical of a conservative doesn't make you a liberal.

Garage - these are journalists you're talking about. They would NOT be saying glowing things about conservatives unless those conservatives were agreeing with liberals about something.

Like Kathleen Parker.

And lo and behold, the leaked emails bear that out.

JournaList was where lib journalists (but I repeat myself) could go to bounce ideas off each other, and vent about how stupid, ignorant, and foolish conservatives and middle America are. Oh, and they could get their stories straight and decide on the best spin too. This is why they didn't want anyone right-of-center in the club.

And as an extra added dollop of whipped cream with a cherry on top, they'll tell you that their reporting is non-partisan.

And that's the reason this listserv is so dangerous and can not be compared to listservs for other groups such as military and health care policy - The MSM tell us their news reporting is unbiased.

Having a peak at what goes on in this little cesspool, along with the requirements for membership cause us knuckle-dragging conservatives to question the media's claim of neutrality just a teensy weeny bit.

I'd be very curious to know if any WaPo editors are [were] also members of Journolist (or even if any of its print reporters were). Not only have I not seen that issue addressed, I've seen no evidence of that question being asked.

“But we’re living in an era when maybe we need to add a level” of inquiry, he said. “It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: ‘In private... have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job.”

this story seems to revolve around Weigel's being outed by a leaker, but Weigel's attitude wasn't a secret. I've never met the guy and have no connection with his social circles, but I follow a bunch of journalists on twitter and he was one of them.

Anyone who followed him on twitter read his contemptuous opinions about the movement he was hired to write about. It's safe to assume that if he tweets like that, he talks like that to his friends in bars and at parties.

He didn't hide it. Apparently he didn't think he needed to maintain an appearance of fairness. Typical lack of professionalism from the Juicebox Mafia. Maybe now their smug insular world will begin to unravel and they'll have to grow up.

David Weigel started his gig at the Washington Post in April of this year (he announced it online at the Washington Independent on March 22, 2010). From what I can tell without seeing a clear, inclusive, concise timeline of e-mails with datestamps, it appears to me that at least a good chunk of the e-mails in question were posted prior, even well prior, to his starting the WaPo gig.

To me, this adds an interesting dimension to the whole story--which is partly why I'd very much like to know the answer to the question I posed in my previous comment here tonight.

Having a peak at what goes on in this little cesspool, along with the requirements for membership cause us knuckle-dragging conservatives to question the media's claim of neutrality just a teensy weeny bit.

Liberals have the same complaints. Afterall, the same Post has many conservatives on the payroll. Krauthammer, Kristol, Thiessen, etc.

I should say that I have read Weigel's stuff for quite a long while, well before he joined WaPo, and when I was maintaining a twitter feed primarily political/media/etc. in focus in terms of whom I followed, he was among the varied mix of journalists/commenters/pundits/opinionators/reporters/etc. I followed from pretty early on.

And I find the idea that WaPo editors and reporters "thought" he was a Conservative, in the sense of the Right he was charged with covering, to be highly suspect at best and either disingenuous or dishonest (depending on circumstances) at worst. For the record, I also find the characterization of him as a lefty, lockstep or otherwise, pretty silly, but that's a secondary point to what I'm most interested in learning.

Good point. I mean, he voted for Ralph Nader, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, he supports Obamacare, ACORN, and the Democratic Party, and he loathes the Republican Party and most of its leadership. But we shouldn't call him left-wing, because that would be silly.

gm: "Why does it seem like a lot of people that dislike journolist are just mad they didn't get invited to join the list."

The main concern I'm seeing is that these dolts conspired to spin the news the way they wanted it reported.

That journalists aren't outraged is proof enough of what a useless profession that is nowadays.

To give you guys a hint --- you don't see NFL players coming out and PRAISING guys for using steroids. They don't try to justify it any longer. They recognize that it makes your entire profession sketchy.

They still try to cheat, mind you, but they are hardly gloating about it as morons like Ezra Klein do.

Which goes to show you that football players, clearly, are smarter than journalists.

And for smart people, I've yet to see anything that resembles intriguing thought in anything they've ever written.

gm: "So, in your mind, you think what Carlson did was "logical"?"

Hopefully, you'll eventually explain how he could leak something he was never a member of. If they gave access to anybody out there...than this shouldn't be a story at all and it makes Ezra Klein's post quite baffling.

gm: "As I said earlier, if Weigel had emailed glowing things about conservatives, conservatives wouldn't be mad, and Carlson wouldn't have printed them."

Given that his job was to cover conservatives...DUH! Just like Ezra's job was to cover liberals and him fellating the Left is expected.

If Al Gore sent emails defending global warming, it wouldn't be news. If sent emails admitting it's a fraud, it might be news.

You're really slow on the uptake here.

gm: "Printing emails that revealed a blogger said some mean things that may have hurt the poor feelings of Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh isn't whistle blowing journalism. It's catty, and he has every right to generate traffic to his site with gossipy bullshit, but that hardly makes him a journalist."

So, reporting on events that certain people don't want to be made public is no longer journalism?

Can you explain, then, what IS journalism?

You seem to forget that Carlson wasn't IN THE LIST. Either somebody gave it to him --- which, if you're a journalist, you run with...or he got in there himself --- which, if you're a journalist, you run with.

gm: "Weigel isn't a liberal, and it's just dumb to label him one."

Clearly, Klein thinks he's a liberal. That's why he was in his list in the first place.

–noun1.a member of the political Left or a person sympathetic to its views.–adjective2.of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or advocated by the political Left.collectivist, left-winger, left-of-center, left-wingOne who holds a left-wing viewpoint; someone who seeks radical social and economic change in the direction of greater equality

garage mahal fantasized: "Liberals have the same complaints. Afterall, the same Post has many conservatives on the payroll. Krauthammer, Kristol, Thiessen, etc."

Bullshit. Let's not go back over their decades long endorsement of liberal candidates, let's just look at what they did to McDonnell in the last VA gubernatorial race.

Any so-called 'liberal' who complains about conservative media bias (especially in the Washington Freakin' Post) is one of those wingbatshit crazy lefties like Robert Cook.

You lefty loons co-opted the term liberal decades ago because you can't own up to your parasitic rot of a philosophy, so don't you think it's about time you man up and stop trying to co-opt libertarianism, the center, and center left?

You lefty loons co-opted the term liberal decades ago because you can't own up to your parasitic rot of a philosophy, so don't you think it's about time you man up and stop trying to co-opt libertarianism, the center, and center left?

You're just the crazy reactionary right winger Weigel was talking about.

Jourolist: a listserv of self-absorbed, smug wet-behind-the-ear pricks who think they're the new gods of journalism. Can such hubris go unpunished?Weigel went down because he wasn't worthy of being a club member and was black-balled for being the pathetic wretch that quite simply didn't belong, you know, the chubby kid with the yarmulke.Carlson leaked the emails? Really?? Why would he have to? The competition amongst the up-and-coming stars of the liberal blogoshere would do the job all by itself, and surely did. (Garage: one of the anointed ratted-out Weigel for flying too high, Icarus style)Weigel will land on his feet at some red-soaked rag, and Journolist will evolve into some other snarky forum for the immortals. Ezra Klein will go on to be...twenty-seven.A pox on all their houses.

Just for the record--This is the fantasy of a man with either a very small or a very soft dick that requires elaborate augmentation in order to be perceptible by his partner. He must be quite a wimp in bed.

SMGalbraith said...The (very) odd aspect of this for me is that if you've read Weigel's columns covering the right for the Post, they've been as fair as any reporter I've read covering the movement.

But they haven't really been fair or interesting, have they? They tell you nothing new. You learn nothing. Instead of actually covering conservatives, like he's supposed to do, all Dave offered up was lukewarm analysis of blogosphere memes and media cliches. The WaPo ought've fired him for the offense of being boring. I say good riddance.

No, I take that back. He's not forgetting. He's trying to turn the attack and make people defensive.

Just goes to show, though. Klein's stated belief that there would be no motive for conflict between liberals and centrists was either misguided or, more likely, just a way to continue to give cover to journalists pretending to be centrists when they are in fact nothing of the sort. You know, like Weigel.

It's not that they have a private little bitch party that's infuriating. There are Yahoo groups for everything from politics to crocheting to wife-swapping. No one gives a ratfuck (to use Weigel's fav construction) about that.

What is infuriating is that "legitimate" reporters and "mainstream" media types used the list to coordinate talking points and construct narratives to push (i.e. that Martha Coakley was a bad candidate and that's why she lost, against the idea that it was Obamacare and far-left excesses of the Democrats that sunk her, even in the People's Republic of Mass).

Entities like the Post and NYT and other places which employ denizens of Journolist are what needs to die, not Journolist.

Why any conservative or libertarian subscribes to any newspaper is beyond me. If the Dems don't vote to bail them out before November, we're witnessing the last couple years we have to put up with crap like Klein and Weigel's shenanigans and the foisting of pantloads like Obama on the American Public.

I don't doubt those numbers. For us libertarians, this last election was an impossible choice. For most of us Obama, a big spending, a big gov't liberal, was a no-brainer NO. But McCain was a non-contrast. He's just not a good fit for libertarians and there was little/no reason to vote for him. I think a more small gov't, humble foreign policy conservative would have garnered more of our votes.

I voted for Ron Paul - a throw away. Did not see any point in voting for Obama or McCain.

I find it fascinating and instructive that of all the sorry little turds in this whole sorry affair (Weigel, Ezra Klein, the Journolist leaker, every other member of Journolist, the higher-ups at the Post who hired/fired Weigel, did I mention Ezra "shortpants" Klein? Well, he deserves to be mentioned again) -- Garage's ideological blinders force him to vent all his rage on someone only tangentially involved, presumably because only that person isn't on Garage's "team".

Printing emails that revealed a blogger said some mean things that may have hurt the poor feelings of Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh

No... Printing emails that revealed a blogger who is supposed to be relaying information about the conservative movement, in good faith, actually despises a good number of the people and the policy views of that movement. Rendering his reporting inadequate at best, slanted at worst.

What we need is to separate and identify 'journalists' [i.e. those with superior writing skills who use those skills to push an ideological viewpoint] and 'reporters' [those who find and report facts without interjecting editorial content].

It would certainly make my life easier, as I could then skip all the 'journalistic' bullshit and read actual 'news'.

docweasel wrote:"What is infuriating is that "legitimate" reporters and "mainstream" media types used the list to coordinate talking points and construct narratives to push (i.e. that Martha Coakley was a bad candidate and that's why she lost, against the idea that it was Obamacare and far-left excesses of the Democrats that sunk her, even in the People's Republic of Mass)."

Yes, that is the problem exactly. Why don't newspapers like the NYT's have a prohibition on their reporters participating on a "cook-the-books" website? It is unethical to do what they were doing.

But I guess if you're liberal then it is impossible for you to do anything unethical.

"What is infuriating is that "legitimate" reporters and "mainstream" media types used the list to coordinate talking points and construct narratives to push (i.e. that Martha Coakley was a bad candidate and that's why she lost, against the idea that it was Obamacare and far-left excesses of the Democrats that sunk her, even in the People's Republic of Mass)."

Almost like one of Frank Luntz Talking Points that gets distributed to every partisan conservative operative to drive the narrative in D.C. Gosh!

For all the time Klein spends proclaiming his and his companion's smartness, they all seem pretty dumb.

You'd think that they'd realize that a big mailing list isn't very secure right off the bat. Then, just to demonstrate things for the theory-impaired, it blows up in their faces with the Townhouse list. Since they're both weak on theory and not very good at empirical results, it blows up in their faces the second time with the Journolist and Mickey Kaus. Then it blows up yet again with the same list and Wiegel.

And now it's obvious they're going to try yet another sooper-sekrit list of like-minded lefties aiming to control the message. This time for sure!

Not that the WaPo editors are much better on the learning from empirical results front. How many more times are they going to put their trust in the judgement of Ezra?

According to CATO, Obama received 27% of the libertarian vote to McCain's 71%. Democrats received 38% of the libertarian vote in 2004, 20% in 2000

But Weigel didn't vote for the Democratic candidate in 2000. He voted for a left-wing extremist, Ralph Nader -- not only voted for, but served as a campaign worker for.

The survey you linked doesn't say what percentage of libertarians voted for Nader in 2000, but the total for all third-party candidates was 8% -- split between Nader, Buchanan, Harry Browne (a.k.a. the Libertarian Party candidate) and all other fringe candidates. In short, it is mathematically impossible for more than a few percent of so-called "libertarians" to have Weigel's voting history. His voting history would place him well on the left of the Democratic Party, in fact.

So, to sum up -- I'm right again. Only a few people who call themselves libertarians voted the way Weigel did.